Whiteboard Friday - Future-Proofing Your&nbspSEO

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

When individuals or companies are new to SEO they often wonder if SEO is a one-time thing, or if it's an ongoing process. In order to stay on top of your game, you need to keep an eye on your rankings over time and adjust accordingly; but there is a lot of core SEO strategy that doesn't change much and paying attention to these fundamentals (along with a little upkeep) can go a long way toward future-proofing your SEO strategy.

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes over the key components of three major areas of any SEO strategy--Technical, Content, and Marketing--to show you where and how you can plan your efforts so they won't be obsolete next month or next year. Whether you're just setting out to optimize your site, or you're already working with an SEO strategy, this video will help you find places to tie-up loose ends and avoid potential frustration down the road.

PS - In the video Rand uses Hitwise as an example of a company that uses unique content effectively, referencing this post about Twitter traffic by Bill "Hold Me Closer Tiny" Tancer.

That's some great editorializing on Bill's name there, Scott :-) I just hope he appreciates the music of Sir Elton.

BTW - If you have topics you'd like to see covered in WB Friday, do feel free to leave replies in the comments to that effect. We've done more than a hundred of them (maybe more than 200) so it's good to know what you want in the future.

I m sure you would have covered Social Media Marketing in WB Friday. But can you give fundamental basics on how Social Media can be used to build links and how it can replace traditional link building methodology.

and yes, I've got a topic for you...as I see it come up over and over on forums and I'm quite tired of the whole issue...

the topic is local directories, and their value if any to SEO for clients. I'm not talking about LOCAL 10-pack or 7-pack MAPS serps..but the regular Google web search rankings, and what part if any in today's SEO best practices such listings can be used to add juice to your client serps.

me? I think that they have NO value...will say that up front as we've got more than 8 years of SEO exp to work from and that type of local dir listing has been dead for client serp juice now for almost 3 years...

Couldn't agree more. One point I would make is the reason that I believe so much of this will stay constant. From a technical aspect it is difficult to train the majority of the web content creating population to adopt/implement new standards. For example if Bing and Google adopted a new <subtitle> tag that fit somewhere between page titles and meta descriptions it would be a challenge to get the majority of website owners to adopt/implement this. It's almost 2010 and it's amazing how many websites don't even take advantage of page titles let alone the rest of the on-page ranking factors. We are making progress though.

Great post Rand. It's interesting to me how tricky people often try and make SEO. Yes it can get tricky in situations, but sticking to the fundamental concepts behind SEO and thinking long term never fails.

I wanted to give a suggestion for future whiteboard friday topics. How about something related to choosing semantic keywords and using them within the content to help rank better. I don't think you have covered keyword strategy within the copy/article. If you did, I am sorry. Will try to look in the archives!

Unfortunately, a lot of companies view SEO as a quick fix. We've been to engagements where results would come in a lot earlier than our estimates and immediately the client will demonstrate levels of dis-engagement like "oh ok, that was quick, we're on Page 1 now for keywords... " they tend to become lax and forget about the problem and issues that got them seeking our help in the first place.

Hi SEOmoz The problem I have found when someone starts a website is that they think that they can leave their website sitting on Google and think as time goes by there website will gradually move up heading to page 1 (This do not happen in the real world) I was one of them people & there are 1000s more out in the internet with a new website who do not know about SEO. So when you actually realise that you have to do SEO then you feel you are swimming with the sharks!

Brilliant. Of all of the thousands of techniques and tricks and methods, they all boil down to three categories. Not only was this presentation right on point, but it helped me figure out who, in my company, is best suited to certain SEO tasks. Thanks.

OK, back to the topic, it pretty much covered everything to secure the future of seo industry, though it's definitely not easy to achieve all of them especially you have to be really talented to be outstanding in marketing.

SEO has become so complex nowadays that it's necessary to specialize in just one or two fields. Nevertheless, it's crucial to be able to maintain a general overview of things - that's when team collaboration becomes a prerequisite for successful SEO. Obviously if you are in-house you need to know it all.

I've got a question for you though: right at the end you make a brief remark about the intersection of the three areas you've described throughout your story. In what sense is the 'intersection' of those three areas future-proof? Would that for example be (a) sitemaps, (b) with unique content, (c) within emails? :-)

Of course this specific example is not what you intend to say and in general I'm not stating that I don't agree with each of the points in your three areas; I just don't see why there's an intersection that's future-proof.

Rand! quick question, I've just received an email from amazon telling me that your book delivery date has been put back again, do you have any inside info on the a time line to the books anticipated appearance?

I agree with the need for a solid foundation. But how can you keep the content part future-proof? That seems to be contradictory, because new content (with viral mojo) needs to be produced at a regular pace in order to keep the visitors (and links) coming.

As for new WB topics, I would like to see you tackle a link building campaign for start to finish: pick an industry and really show how it can be done with as-real-as-possible examples.

Rand can of course speak for himself, but it is my understanding that Rand's focus on future-proofing content speaks to putting a content strategy in place; that is, a checklist for producing on-going content that works for SEO both now and in the future - as opposed to producing one-time content and then moving on.

yes, great vid for WBF.. well, usually companies tend to move when threatened, or "why fix it if not broken" strategy, not knowingly, SEO techniques can and will stabilize their status.. hope to see more of this WBF episodes! cheers

Nice post man, yeah, laying a good foundation, and doing things 'properly' is the only way to get great, longlasting results. Companies should have an ongoing SEO budget built into their advertising costs each year.

Absolutely. While the labels are a bit different, we break the focus out based on those three criteria as well.

Companys have to understand that this is an ongoing effort, just like anything else they do. Sites that are underperforming from where they once were need to realize it may be less about the engines changing and more about the bar getting raised higher by the competition implementing the same best practices.

This is an important distinction because architecture/technical, content, and link building/web presence/marketing often impact different business units. It helps to show companys how each of these areas play a role and how the ultimate success of their efforts is also based on how well these three come together.

Ironically, at the end of the day, companys find that the web isn't really that different... business is business and success comes from:

Great whiteboard Friday post as always! It's scary to think that all the work we are all putting into our sites can one day be deemed "worthless" by the search engines. As long as we maintain the 3 main parts of SEO that you just discussed we should always be able to build upon them.

I think an idea would be to discuss the value of do follow forum links. I believe that too many people place value within these links. I don't think they hurt your site, however I don't believe the value is what it use to be years ago.

I vote for this topic too! There are so many ways to measure SEO success/failure out there. Which ones can you trust? Which ones are legit? Which ones are easy? Which ones are free? So many questions...only one whiteboard can help!

I think by "Future-Proofing Your SEO" your really creating a strong foundation not creating something that doesn't have to be altered. As people have mentioned: Fresh Content is Important New Coding Methodologies are Introduced New Optimization Techniques New Social Media Options And General Changes in Company/Client Target Market, Product and Services. These items change maybe not at the speed of light but I think having a strong foundation will help you keep up with changes. This to me is the point of this post. After seeing several companies wreck great websites by never adding new content, not updating their services or marketing plans I always ensure the client knows SEO and website marketing is an on going process just like if you stop paying for your Yellow Page ad eventually it will not show up in the Yellow Pages. The same applies to SEO and SEM not continually making efforts to better your online marketing efforts could lead to finding yourself on page 10 in the SERPs.

Its always harder to stay on top then getting their; for the most part.